Against the cabin windows the seas slapped smartly and with a kind of repetition as the movement of the ship turned one side and another into the depths, the cabin door banged explosively with a quick capriciousness of the wind; overhead, faintly, the cries of the navigators could be heard; with it all, the reader pursued doggedly the liturgy of that most sublime achievement of the English religious genius, the book of Common Prayer. Did he, as his square thumbs turned the pages, light for a moment with chill dread upon the Burial Service? The arrangement of the watches provided that those who attended the service of prayer should go from there to their hammocks and rest until it was time to relieve the next watch. “Who fires first?” A man fully dressed, but without his boots, gently punched one of the bulging hammocks and whispered this strange question to the occupant whose head bobbed up. If the man addressed knew who was to fire first, he did not say so, for his only answer to the query was to roll deftly out of his hammock and drop, with a scarcely audible pad of bare feet, to the deck, tightening his belt about his waist and twisting his dirk scabbard conveniently in front of him. “Who fires first?” From one hammock, selected from the swaying lines, to another the queer question proceeded, always receiving the same reply,--tight lips and a quick flop of feet on the deck. Six men had been asked in the gusty darkness who was to fire first and now, cautiously fingering their way along the deck works, and in single file, they crept toward the cabins of the first mate, the doctor and the supercargo. The passageway connecting these small cabins was heavy with the smell of old tobacco, drugs, wine and wet clothing and lighted by one small lantern above the entrance. Softly, softly--a hand gently thrust against a swinging door--a foot across the threshold--and death was laid quickly at the throats of the sleepers. The mate, however, was a strong man. Clutching his gaping throat convulsively with his two hands, he ran to the deck, only to meet a conclusive volley of pistol balls. The captain, hearing the uproar, came up in his slippered feet, calling out for the cause of it all, to which the boatswain answered that he thought a couple of men had fallen overboard. The captain rushed to the side and gazed into the black waters, and immediately was seized by two men, who struggled to hoist him over the bulwark. Desperately, the victim fought in their grasp, but scarcely had he twisted himself once about, ere, in back and front, the dirk sank into his flesh. “As we eat, so shall we work,” grinned old Paterson, wiping his wet blade on the poor remains. III